Free Thin Air by Robert B. Parker Page B

car?" he said.
    "Yes."
    "Welcome to San Juan Hill," the priest said. "Children on bicycles?"
    "Yes."
    "They like to do that," the priest said. "They particularly like to surround Anglo women, and when the car stops to beat them."
    "Because they like to?"
    "Because they like to."
    "Sure," I said. "I'm looking for a young man named Luis Deleon. He might be here in San Juan Hill."
    "Why are you looking for him?"
    "As a means to an end," I said. "There's a woman missing, I'm looking for her. I'm told she once had a relationship with Deleon."
    "Is this an Anglo woman?"
    "Yes."
    "You would not bother to look for a Latin woman."
    "I look for anyone I'm hired to look for."
    "You are not a policeman then?"
    "No. I'm a private detective."
    "And you have a gun," the priest said, "under your coat."
    "You're very observant, Father."
    "I have seen a lot of guns, my friend," the priest said.
    "Yes, I imagine you have," I said.
    The priest looked out over the gray and graffiti landscape of Proctor. Somewhere a car squealed its tires as it went at high speed around a corner. In the asphalt and chain-link playground across from the church, three kids sat against the wall smoking, and drinking from a wine bottle in a paper sack. A huge dirty gray cat, slouched so low that its belly dragged, padded out of the alley next to the church carrying a dead rat.
    "Not what I imagined when I left the seminary thirty years ago," the priest said. "Bright, fresh-scrubbed children gazing up at me, learning the word of God. Green lawn in front of the church, bean suppers in the basement, young couples getting married, solemn funerals for prosperous old people who had died quietly in their sleep."
    The priest looked at me.
    "I was supposed to live a life of reverence," he said. "I was supposed to visit suburban hospitals, where the staff knew and admired me, and give communion to people in flowery bed linens, with bows in their hair."
    "The ways of the Lord are often dark, but never pleasant, Father."
    "Who said that?"
    "Besides me? A guy named Reich, I think."
    "I don't know him. I hope he is not correct."
    "You know Deleon?" I said.
    "Yes."
    "You know where I can find him?"
    "No, I have not seen him since he was small. His mother used to bring him, then, but she was a desperate woman and one day she killed herself, God rest her soul. I never saw Luis again. But I hear things. I hear he has become an important person in San Juan Hill."
    The priest paused and looked at me.
    "And I hear he has become very dangerous."
    I nodded.
    "You should be careful if you plan to approach him," the priest said.
    "I'm fairly dangerous myself, Father."
    "Yes, you have the look. I have seen it far too often not to know it."
    "If you were me, Father, where would you look for Deleon?"
    "I don't know:"
    "Would any of your parishioners know?"
    "If they do, they would not tell me."
    "You're their priest."
    "Here I am not their priest. I am a gringo."
    I nodded. The priest was silent. I could hear a boom box playing somewhere.
    "If you do not speak Spanish, no one in San Juan Hill will speak with you."
    "Even if they speak English?"
    "Even then."
    "How about Freddie Santiago?" I said.
    "He might speak to you, if he thought it served him. But he is not in San Juan Hill."
    "What would serve Santiago?" I said.
    The priest thought about my question.
    "There is no simple answer to that," he said. "Santiago is an evil man, of this there is no question. He is a criminal, almost surely a murderer. He deals in narcotics, in prostitutes, in gambling. He sells green cards. He controls much of what happens in the Hispanic community here, which is to say most of Proctor."
    "Except San Juan Hill," I said.
    "Except San Juan Hill."
    "So what's the no-simple part?"
    "He is not entirely, I think, a bad man. A poor person can get money or a job from Freddie Santiago. Wars among some of the youth gangs are settled by him. Paternity and alimony payments are often enforced by him. Every election he works